Performing Artist in Residence Series Returns to the Clark

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Sunday, Nov. 21 at 2 pm, pianist Jeewon Park and cellist Edward Arron, co-artistic directors of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute return to resume their concert series, now in its ninth year. 
 
The Sunday afternoon concert will be presented in the Clark's Michael Conforti Pavilion and features a program of music for piano and cello, offering Mendelssohn: "Sonata in B-flat Major for Cello and Piano," "Opus 45, Arvo Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel" (1978), and Rachmaninoff: "Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Opus 19."
 
According to a press release, Korean-born pianist Jeewon Park has garnered the attention of audiences around the world for her dazzling technique and poetic lyricism. Since making her debut at the age of twelve performing Chopin's First Concerto with the Korean Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Park has performed in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center in Korea. An avid chamber musician, she has performed at prominent festivals throughout the world, including the Spoleto USA, the Emilia-Romagna Festival (Italy), the Music Alp in Courchevel (France), and the Kusatsu Summer Music Festival (Japan). Ms. Park is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Yale University, where she was awarded the Dean Horatio Parker Prize. She holds the DMA degree from SUNY Stony Brook.
 
Cellist Edward Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. Mr. Arron tours and records as a member of the renowned Ehnes Quartet, and appears regularly at the Caramoor International Music Festival, where he has been a resident performer and curator of chamber music concerts for more than twenty-five years. He appears in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician throughout North America, Europe and Asia and is the artistic director and host of the acclaimed Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he has participated in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project as well as Isaac Stern's Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Arron is on the faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
 
In January 2021, the couple's recording of Beethoven's Complete Works for Cello and Piano was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label and received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award from the Classical Recording Foundation.
 
The concert is presented without intermission. Please note that patrons will not be seated after the performance begins.
 
Tickets:  $25 nonmembers/$20 Clark members. Free for all students with a valid student ID. All ticket sales are nonrefundable. All guests must wear masks during the performance. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit clarkart.edu/events.
 

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WCMA: 'Cracking the Code on Numerology'

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opens a new exhibition, "Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art."
 
The exhibit opened on March 22.
 
According to a press release: 
 
The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. Rooted in the Babylonian science of astrology, medieval Christian numerology taught that God created a well-ordered universe. Deciphering the universe's numerical patterns would reveal the Creator's grand plan for humanity, including individual fates. 
 
This unquestioned concept deeply pervaded European cultures through centuries. Theologians and lay people alike fervently interpreted the Bible literally and figuratively via number theory, because as King Solomon told God, "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight" (Wisdom 11:22). 
 
"Cracking the Cosmic Code" explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d'Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. 
 
"There was no realm of thought that was not influenced by the all-consuming belief that all things were celestially ordered, from human life to stones, herbs, and metals," said WCMA Assistant Curator Elizabeth Sandoval, who curated the exhibition. "As Vincent Foster Hopper expounds, numbers were 'fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.' These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere. 
 
"The exhibition looks back while moving forward: It relies on the collection's strengths in Western medieval Christianity, but points to the future with goals of acquiring works from the global Middle Ages. It also nods to the history of the gallery as a medieval period room at this pivotal time in WCMA's history before the momentous move to a new building," Sandoval said.
 
Cracking the Cosmic Code runs through Dec. 22.
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